Month: December 2008

How much is that condo in the window?

Down the street from me is a rather beautiful set of condominia, one of which has just popped up on the market: 7 Park Ave #1. Asking price: $1.1 million.

It’s a very nicely done and very spacious unit, but it also seems like a lot of money for the neighborhood, and in particular a lot of money for something with aluminum siding and no yard. Plus, the Zestimate is only $620k. Even given that the Zestimate can be wildly inaccurate, I became curious: What was the previous sales price?

Zillow usually has the sales history, but didn’t in this case, so I looked it up on Mass Land Records. It turns out it was sold in 2002 by Lalo Development LLC to Gorka Brabo for $1.00. Yes, one dollar. Sounds like that’s a token transfer from a business to the person who owns the business. (Based on this page from city-data.com I’m guessing the Brabo family owns Lalo Development).

There’s nothing wrong with buying something for a dollar, especially if it’s just a title transfer from a company you own to your personal property. But it sure makes it harder to figure out what the original cost was, and that makes it hard for me to guess whether $1.1M is in line with the money put into the place.

Another weird detail: Brabo is also listed as the sales agent for the unit. Does that mean he’ll take a realtor’s commission as well? That would be pretty brilliant.

Anyway, Zillow guesses the property is worth just over half the asking price. Anyone care to hazard guesses about the eventual sale price, the amount of time it will spend on the market, and what you’d be willing to pay for a Davis Square loft-style condo?

I almost felt sorry for Kevin Cullen

I got a shout-out from Universal Hub for my recent Kevin Cullen takedown, and felt a little bad about it. Maybe I should have written a critique rather than a series of insults.

But then today, he’s got a new piece titled “Circus Comes to City Hall” that’s not just sloppy but nearly incomprehensible. Besides accusing Chuck Turner of being a Communist because he’s got a funny beard, I’m just not sure what Cullen’s trying to say. At various points he seems to be arguing that it’s disgusting to see people accused of crimes trying to defend themselves and that the lawyers who defend them are morally deficient. But he might also just be trying to revive the word “pinko.”

We all know that newspapers are in trouble for a variety of reasons, but tripe like Cullen’s recent output certainly isn’t going to be what saves them.

Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe Misses A Few Key Issues on Student Loans

Yesterday the Globe published an article by Kevin Cullen titled Ungrateful Sallie Mae, about a Marine Corpsman who died and left behind $100,000 or so of student loan debt. The Globe’s reporter says: “[His father] wrote to the lenders, asking that the debts be forgiven. Two wrote back, saying they would forgive the loans. The third, Sallie Mae, the government-created college loan provider that privatized its operations in 2004, refused.” The article goes on to portray Sallie Mae in a pretty negative light.

Since I work in the industry (please don’t construe this post as anything official coming from my employer), I immediately had questions. Key questions that would explain how something like that could happen. Questions the author should have investigated and did not. Notably, Cullen’s report was missing any explanation of what kinds of student loans were taken out, whether they had co-signers, and whether the deceased had life insurance.

If the article were actually going to inform anyone about the tragedy and how it happened, it would need to explain that there are two major kinds of student loans: Federal and private. Federal student loans are guaranteed by the government and are automatically forgiven in the event of the death of the borrower. It sounds like the first two loans, the ones forgiven by the lenders, were federal.

The other loan sounds like a private loan. Private student loans are not guaranteed by the government, and do not have as many protections as federal loans do. For most borrowers, they also require a co-signer, usually a parent. The contracts typically state that if for any reason (and I mean any) the borrower cannot or does not pay, the co-signer is on the hook for the loan. That’s how co-signing works, and why many financial advisers suggest that you avoid co-signing a loan for anyone if at all possible.

Now, this is still a horrible story, and the young man’s death is undoubtedly a tragedy. But the article fails to explain any of the background of how the wreckage left behind by the tragedy came to be.

It also fails to explain the existence of a whole system set up to pay your bills if you die. It’s called life insurance. In general, life insurance is provided all military personnel. I do not know if there are any exceptions and I do not know if the Lieutenant was one, because Cullen doesn’t even bother to ask about that.

Now, I’m no journalist, but even I can tell that if you want to write an article that gets beyond “wow, college is expensive and loans are hard to pay back,” you need to do things like consult experts and look up regulations. At the very least, you could consult Finaid.org. Sallie Mae presumably has PR flacks, but it doesn’t sound like Cullen asked them for a comment. He does say that the grieving father was unable to navigate Sallie Mae’s phone tree to get to a real human, but does not mention whether he himself tried to do so, or whether he tried their email customer support offering.

Is it budget cutbacks that prevent Kevin Cullen from doing any actual leg-work on his articles? Because really, there’s nothing to this piece except that it sucks to die and it sucks to borrow money and not be able to repay it, and that’s not actually news.

Welcome to Massachussetts, where messageboards are…. actually helpful?

Someone just moved to Boston from Texas and has just a few questions about snow. Things like “Where do I get salt? And what do you do, just sprinkle it all around?”

That’s not particularly surprising. If you’re new to the climate, you’re new to the climate.

What’s impressive is that nobody (so far) has developed any serious snark, and the posts have actually provided useful information about where to get snow-clearing supplies, who is responsible for snow-clearing in apartment buildings, and the nuances of conflicting snow and street-sweeping rules (What do you do if the snow-emergency rule says not to park on the odd side, and the street-sweeping rule says not to park on the even side? Call 311, apparently).

Couldn’t get in to Ferran Adria at Harvard?

You’re not the only one. I was waffling about whether to go, but M. called me shortly after five to let me know that the 6:30 event was already completely packed, and I shouldn’t bother coming. Fortunately there’s simulcast and video and so forth up if you want to hear what the celebrated mad Catalan chef has to say.